Thursday Hawkeyes Reading Room -- there's only one bowl game, and Iowa plays for it on Saturday

It's two days until Iowa-Ohio State. A Rose Bowl hangs in the balance. A Rose Bowl.

I've covered 19 bowl games, 17 involving Iowa. Three of them have been Rose Bowls, two involving Iowa. It's the stadium, the backdrop, the tradition, the aesthetics, the hokey traditions like the Beef Bowl at an L.A. steakhouse, the Rose Parade, and sunny southern California.

Before we get to all the links, how about a song from the great Randy Newman?

There are other bowl games. But there is no other bowl game.

Now, on with the show.

Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor is nervous. He wants his teammates to take Iowa seriously.

From this Associated Press story:

"Coach Tres showed a statistic how all these teams go and beat a big team and then come in the next game (and lose)," Pryor said after practice.

"Maybe sometimes there's a mindset where you think you accomplished something," he said. "It happens a lot, I'm sure, and we can't let that happen to us. Because we have a goal that we want to reach and we have places that we want to go and if we do that, we're definitely getting knocked off by this (Iowa) team because this team is pretty good. They're the real deal on defense. We have to come in focused."

Pryor has a bum ankle. It's not as troublesome as, say, Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi's. But Ohio State is talking about having its running backs take some of the pressure off the fleet-footed Pryor.

Doug Lesmerises of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has been a Hlog mainstay this week since he covers the Buckeyes very well. From Doug's story on the OSU ground game:

OSU tailbacks carried the ball 39 times against Penn State for 143 yards, not dominance by any stretch, but enough to grind away and control the game. Running back Brandon Saine, who carried 20 times for 68 yards, said the Buckeyes used some old and new plays to go at the Nittany Lions.

"We came at them with a little different stuff we hadn't done before," Saine said. "And we gave an all-out effort and I don't think their defense was ready for it. It felt like while we were in the game we were doing well with the tailbacks, and when something is going good, [the coaches] like to keep it going. They really wanted to get Terrelle in a good place throwing the ball, so we were there to help him."

But don't ignore Buckeyes wide receiver DeVier Posey. ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg certainly hasn't.

Posey committed to play wide receiver for Ohio State in March 2007. Almost exactly a year later, Pryor signed on with the Buckeyes.

"[Pryor] was our No. 1 target as far as our recruiting class goes," Posey said. "As much as the coaches were recruiting him, we were recruiting him more."

The two have formed one of the Big Ten's top big-play connections this fall, hooking up 45 times for 672 yards and seven touchdowns. Six of Posey's seven scoring grabs have been 23 yards or longer and three have stretched 57 yards or longer, including a 62-yarder in last week's victory at Penn State.

Only 16 teams can ever win the BCS national title, says Jay Christensen of Covers.com and The Wiz of Odds. Ohio State is one of them, as you would expect. The other 15 are listed here in Jay's column for Covers.

The Wiz has another edition of the Postgame Tailgate, and Iowa again is part of the comedy stylings of Dan Rubenstein. I've stolen it from the Wiz, and slapped it up here. The Iowa part is at the 1:30 mark.

Veering off the road to Columbus, the Oshawa Hawkeyes Football Club is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Oshawa is a working-class city in Ontario. Its Hawkeyes are hard-hitting young fellows. For the the team's Web site, click here.

And finally, someone who shares my name is doing better work at a young age than I could ever have dreamed of. Michael Hlas of Sioux City has Asperger's Disorder, a variant of Autistic Disorder.

I'm no autism expert, but I know it's neat when someone creates art that is used at a fundraiser to create autism awareness. Especially when that someone is battling autism himself.

Although most of the art is in a collage presentation, Michael Hlas, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder, has a photograph that will be auctioned off.

"A year ago, I was at home watching this storm out our back window develop," he said. "I could see a rotation appearing."

Hlas grabbed a Fuji digital camera and captured the moment.

"As the storm progressed east, we heard a tornado warning issued later," he related. "So I guess my prediction of that moment was right."

Nice going, Michael.